Industrial Automation 1955 video from GE

[Stonent]

This was an interesting video on automation from over half a century ago by GE about the benefits of industrial automation.  At the time, it was simply called the "Apparatus Division" of GE.

What's most interesting I think is within the last 10 minutes where they talk about designing for production, and the last 6 minutes showing machinery with programmable logic.

They start with an automatic milling machine that instead of being CNC controlled like they have today, it uses a scale template that it repeatedly traces around. Then they go into using computer generated instructions stored on tape and cards.

Also they show in the video somewhere about automated test procedures with ignition coils, automotive condensers, and fluorescent starters.

Just really neat.

[MrSlack]

That is awesome. Thanks for posting it

[DenzilPenberthy]

 

[rrinker]

 In the machine shop I worked my first job out of college, that I've mentioned in other posts, we had two of GE's earliest numeric controls, the 550 and 1050, running lathes. The 550 was probably the successor to that mag tape system - after they found mag tape and a dirty shop environment don't go together very well. It did the same basic thing, play back the tape to control the servos, except it was paper tape, not mag tape. Ours was retrofitted with an 8080 based storage unit so you could runt he paper tape once and it stored it in the computer memory. From there you could rerun it as many times as you wanted, pause, or single step it. For this purpose it had a row of LEDs across the paper tape reader so it literally simulated a paper tape. The 1050 was more advanced, and included the computer, but loading programs was still accomplished by paper tape. So was loading the operating system, which had a tendency to fail a few times. There was a design flaw - no take up reel for the tape, it just dumped into a hopper below the reader head. So when it failed to initialize, there I was, hand rolling the paper tape back onto the source spool to try again. Contrast that to the newest machine we had, another lathe with an automatic stock feeder that had a very modern (at the time - 1989 or so) control with a color CRT that could give a 3D view of the part being worked. And everything in between. Was an interesting place to work.

[Stonent]

I found another copy of the same video here. The audio and video are a bit cleaner. It sounds like they ran a low pass filter on it.